Find Time for Exercise: How to Challenge Yourself and Enjoy the Benefits of Regular Exercise

By Mike Dales

Find Time for Exercise offers an achievable solution – regular exercise – to one of the biggest health issues facing the world today: physical inactivity and its consequent problems, including obesity, reduced life expectancy and a wide range of physical and mental health issues.

Part 1 sets the scene by describing the worldwide scale of the problem, then focuses on the benefits of exercise and finding the inspiration to increase your own activity levels. Part 2 shares the author’s own exercise challenge and how he began an unbroken eight-year streak of moving at least 5 kilometres per day – walking, running, cycling, kayaking, canoeing or skiing. Part 3 tells the personal stories of ten brave men and women who took on their own challenges to improve their health and well-being, and make positive changes in their lives. Part 4 of the book looks at a range of other challenges, including The Daily Mile and parkrun, and goes on to discuss the health benefits of active commuting, workplace activity and owning a dog. This builds a motivating case for Part 5, which helps the reader set and achieve their own challenge, with suggestions for how to find time for exercise in their busy lives.

The final chapter draws together a list of ten principles aimed at helping the reader to choose and succeed in their own challenge. By making regular exercise an achievable activity, focused on the individual’s own goals, however modest, this book shows how everyone can find time for exercise and reap the benefits.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Aug 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800466333

Mike Dales

Mike Dales is devoted to helping people get outdoors to share his passion for the countryside, as well as the physical and mental health benefits from taking outdoor exercise. Mike is a keen runner, hillwalker, cyclist and skier, and is based in rural Perthshire.

Book preview

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Health warning

Introduction

Foreword

Sean Conway

Sean Conway is a well-known endurance adventurer who became the first person to separately cycle, swim and run from Land’s End to John O’Groats. The swimming journey made headline news when Sean became the first person to swim the length of Great Britain, famously growing a thick ginger beard to prevent jellyfish stings.

In 2016, he completed the world’s longest triathlon, a 4,200-mile journey around the coast of Britain. Then in 2018, Sean broke the record for the fastest cycle journey across Europe, making the 3,980-mile trip from Portugal to Russia in 24 days, 18 hours and 39 minutes.

Sean’s achievements are so impressive, you might assume he’s always been a fit and healthy sportsman with boundless energy, but that is far from the case.

Back when I was a school portrait photographer, I did absolutely no exercise at all. In fact, for most of my entire 20s I didn’t own a pair of running shoes, I never went to the gym, and never played any team sports on the weekends. The closest I think I ever came to something that involved exercise was running to catch the Number 13 bus down to the photo lab where I worked part-time to pay the bills.

Needless to say, after ten years of this level of inactivity I came to the realisation that I was unfit, unmotivated and lacked any drive in life. I was miserable. Something needed to change, and I decided to work on three principles that I still use to this day.

When I’m feeling a bit low, dull, fogged-up in my head, I know that I’ve not been keeping to my three golden rules. These aren’t instant fixes; they are long-term rules. They are: eat better, get fitter and spend more time outside in natural light. It really is that simple.

The one way to make sure you get all three of those is to take more exercise. When you exercise you will naturally get fitter and spend more time outdoors, then all that’s left is to enjoy your improved appetite and eat more healthily.

Since I made this decision in my life, I’ve somehow gone on to become a world record breaking endurance adventure athlete, and even to this day I still can’t believe I was capable of it all. The positivity and strength I have to push myself all stemmed from that early decision to find time for exercise. It seems such a simple idea, and that’s because – it is.

I wish everyone knew the benefits; so when I heard about Mike’s book, Find Time for Exercise, I immediately wanted to add my stamp of approval, because it’s exactly what I believe in.

Preface

This book is aimed at everyone, absolutely everyone, including you.

It is a passionate promotion of the benefits of regular exercise and in particular the benefits of adopting an exercise challenge, however modest it might be, to help you stay motivated.

I am not an Olympic champion, international footballer or renowned mountaineer, just someone who loves being active and wants to share his passion with you.

Whether you are male or female, young or old, fit, unfit or somewhere in-between, this book is for you. It doesn’t push any specific type of exercise challenge and it certainly doesn’t matter what level of fitness you currently have. That’s because it is not a book about competitive sport, but about exercise and the physical and mental health benefits that can be gained from taking regular exercise.

I’ve already mentioned the word exercise several times, but please think of exercise in its widest possible sense, or read it as activity or movement if those words are more appropriate for you. I don’t want anyone to be put off by a mere word. If this book encourages you to move more, then it has done its job.

This is a self-help book aimed at helping anyone to become more active than they currently are, no matter where they are on the spectrum between totally inactive and superfit. All the stories in this book are of people who have moved along that spectrum and increased their activity levels, some by a small amount and others by more than they imagined they were capable of.

Please don’t be discouraged by those who are going beyond what you can ever imagine yourself doing. Instead, try to pick out the pieces of advice they’re giving and think about how you could apply those ideas into your own situation.

So, I invite you to come on this journey with me, and I hope you will be inspired to find time for exercise and set your own exercise challenge, however small or great. You might just be amazed at what you can achieve.

Health warning

This book promotes the benefits of regular exercise, but the author acknowledges that exercise, or a sudden increase in an individual’s level of exercise, can lead to health problems including injury, illness and even death.

If you are in any doubt about your body’s ability to cope with an increase in your current level of physical activity, then sensible advice is to seek guidance from your doctor.

A likely cause of doubt may arise because of an underlying health condition that you are already aware of, in which case the recommendation to seek a professional opinion from a doctor is one that the author would endorse.

Also, if you start to increase your exercise levels and feel any discomfort that concerns you, then it would be a sensible precaution to seek your doctor’s advice at that point.

Here is a list of four warning signs that you should be particularly on the lookout for:

•Chest pain

•Shortness of breath

•Dizziness

•Joint pain

In each case, try to be aware of what is normal for you and try to be alert to changes that you wouldn’t expect or which you find difficult to explain. For example, if you have exerted yourself a lot in recent days you may get short of breath more easily than usual, but if you find yourself out of breath after some very easy exercise, then you may want to seek a doctor’s opinion as to why that might be, especially if you wouldn’t normally get out of breath as quickly as that.

If you are in any doubt, seek medical advice.

Please take this health warning seriously, but, and this is a big

BUT

be aware that the greatest risk is not to risk. The greatest risk to the vast majority of people right now stems from the debilitating effects of physical inactivity, such as weight gain and a range of physical and mental health problems.

To go for a walk is to risk spraining an ankle by stepping in a rabbit hole, to go out on a bike is to risk falling off, and to go for a run is to risk tripping over an out-of-control dog, but to stay indoors and watch television is to risk putting on weight, succumbing to loneliness and depression, losing mobility in your joints and slowly, imperceptibly, falling into human disrepair and decay.

I’ve looked at that risk assessment myself and chosen to get outdoors for some exercise at every opportunity. I hope you will make the same assessment and arrive at the same conclusion.

•Just to throw in an additional consideration, it is worth thinking about this simple fact from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA)¹: The home is the most common location for an accident to happen.

Dr Mike Evans’ video

After reading this health warning section, I would really encourage you to go onto YouTube and watch the video by Dr Mike Evans² titled: 24 hour fitness - 23 and ½ hours. Mike Evans is a doctor in Canada and his amusing five-minute video sums up the power of exercise in a beautiful way. It really is the ideal accompaniment to this book and I highly recommend you find time to watch it today.

Introduction

There’s a five-kilometre road circuit that I’ve cycled more times than I’m able to remember. The roads are quiet, rural, scenic and there’s one short climb, just enough to get the legs and heart pumping. It’s my regular cycle route for when I just want to get out for some quick exercise. I enjoy it every time and I’m able to vary it. For instance, I usually go round anti-clockwise, but sometimes I just decide to go the other way to take in a steeper hill. Then there are various spurs off the circuit, so I’m able to turn it into a longer ride when I have a bit more time or get the sudden urge to stay out and play a while longer.

Having ridden it so many times, my various journeys now just merge into one big memory bank of riding it in all weathers and at all times of year. One particular ride round the circuit, which I have no recollection of now, bar an entry in my diary and on my spreadsheet, was on Monday, 25 March 2013. Although I didn’t know it then, that was the start of a very long and adventurous journey. That was day one of my five kilometres a day challenge.

Over eight years later, the challenge is still going. I have an unbroken run of over 3,000 consecutive days of always making an active journey of at least five kilometres every single day. It’s a great challenge and I’m loving the exercise and the many benefits I take from it. Furthermore, and this is the main reason for writing this book, my exercise challenge has really sparked my interest in the way other people are challenging themselves to be more active, and that in turn has led me to develop a strong desire to encourage others to find their equivalent challenge.

My appeal to you is to consider what might be an appropriate challenge for you to take on. It doesn’t matter how modest it might be. If it involves you being more active than you are at present, then you are likely to benefit from that extra exercise. So, please work your way through this book, read about the background to the way inactivity is such a danger to the human body (Part 1), take inspiration from my challenge (Part 2) and those of the other people that I interviewed for this book (Part 3), and look at the broad spectrum of other challenges (Part 4) that are available for you to adopt or adapt. The culmination of this book (Part 5) is when I help you to find a way of challenging yourself and hopefully moving you along that spectrum towards being a more active and healthier version of yourself. You’ll see you are not alone, and that the rewards are achievable, no matter what your starting point.

Why you should read this book

This book is about the benefits of taking regular exercise and is aimed at inspiring you to set yourself an exercise challenge. Don’t panic and please don’t run away at the prospect of going for a run. I’m not advocating compulsory marathon running or outdoor swimming. However, the general trend over the last fifty or so years has been for more and more people in the developed world to adopt an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. The average amount of exercise we take is going down and all the available evidence suggests the consequence of this inactivity is taking its toll on our physical and mental health, as well as costing our health services (National Health Service (NHS) in the UK) millions in treating us for the range of ailments caused by too much sitting and too little movement. This issue is also acting to increase the cost of private health care in many other countries.

There is little doubt in my mind that there is a direct causal link between lack of exercise and poor health. I’m sure I’m not alone in believing that the only way out of this vicious circle is going to be based on people increasing their levels of physical exercise.

If a more active life leads to a healthier life, then a more active life should also lead to a happier and more productive life. Taking exercise seriously and accepting a level of responsibility for our personal health has the dual benefits of providing the individual with a better life and reducing our reliance on the NHS.

So, where do we begin? Well, for a start, you could set yourself a simple challenge like walking one mile a week more than you currently walk. Sadly, it’s not going to be that easy to convince everyone to walk an extra mile per week, but as individuals we can take on our personal challenges and at least carry out our part in improving the health of our nation.

To really make inroads into getting a significant proportion of the world’s population taking more exercise is going to be a complex challenge. It is going to require a large number of initiatives to make it happen. It has already taken up enormous levels of public investment across many nations, but still the trend in how active we are remains stubbornly downwards. Sadly, the trend in public spending on health is increasingly and stubbornly upwards and will have to remain so as long as our willingness to exercise continues on its current descending trajectory.

My starting point for writing this book is that I wanted to write the book I wish I had read when I was 20, and as I read it back to myself now, I feel that I’ve achieved that goal. Had I read this book in 1980, I might have had a 40-year unbroken run of making a five kilometre journey every day by now, and perhaps enjoyed better health over some of those intervening years. Whatever age you are when you read this book, I just hope that you enjoy it and feel inspired to become more active. You never know, it might make you a healthier, happier, fitter and more confident person. You might even live longer.

While I explore the exercise routines of some exceptionally active and highly driven people, this isn’t just about the superfit and hyperactive. This is very much about the busy mum or overweight 60+ year old who makes a deliberate decision to set themselves an apparently simple challenge like getting out and walking a couple of extra miles a week. If you are inspired by their endeavours, or maybe just one of their stories, then that will please me no end. Part 3, which shares the inspiring stories of the people I’ve spoken to about their exercise challenges, is deliberately very broad in scope. The challenges vary widely, but no matter how big or small, to the people setting those challenges, they represent an incredible effort and great deal of determination.

If you are reading this at the age of 20 or under, then I hope you have many years ahead of you in which you can put these ideas and suggestions into practice. If, on the other hand, you are reading this at a somewhat more mature age, then I would suggest you take the view, I am the age that I am, and this is my starting point for a new challenge in my life. You are where you are in life, we’re all different and at different stages, so take what you can from this book, whoever you are, whatever your age and whatever your starting point.

I’m very much into quick wins, so throughout this book you will find ideas for ways in which you can quickly and simply make a series of effective changes in your life. Before the end of today, go for a walk that you wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t read this paragraph, or if it is late in the evening just jump up and down on the spot for twenty seconds. If someone sees you doing that they might think you’ve gone mad, but you will at least have achieved a quick win, and who knows, you might inspire them to jump up and down as well.

The final point I want to make in this Introduction is that when you take some physical exercise, it doesn’t just help your physical health, it is also good for your mind and your mental health. I find that it helps me to get away from all the chaos of work and tasks that need to be done and it just calms me down for a while, even if it’s just for 15 minutes. I often find that when my brain has a chance to slow down for a few minutes, a bright idea will suddenly pop into my head from out of nowhere. Some of the best lines in this book were composed while I was out walking, running and cycling. In fact, that was one of them. There were many occasions during the writing of this book when I had to rush home from a walk or bike ride to get a really good sentence typed up before it escaped from my short-term memory. In comparison, I only thought of two lines in this book while driving, and that was one of them.

So, go on, give it a go!

PART 1

The Impact of Inactivity on Health and Well-being

1

Finding inspiration and

maintaining motivation

Receiving inspiration

When a sportsperson, musician or somebody else in the news is interviewed, they are often asked, Who was your inspiration? A common response is the name of a single inspirational figure, but that usually leaves me wondering who their second, third, fourth and thirty-fifth most inspirational figures were.

To get to where we are today we are all inspired, influenced and shaped by a long list of people. The person who had the biggest influence on you wouldn’t have provided you with that level of inspiration had it not been for a whole range of other individuals and experiences in your life prior to that.

When Mark Beaumont cycled round the world and Dr Andrew Murray ran from John O’Groats to the Sahara Desert, they inspired me to cycle from Land’s End to John O’Groats, but that only happened because Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best inspired me to get outdoors and muddy when I was 7-years-old, and Dave Bedford and Brendan Foster inspired my passion for running in my early teens, then one of my teachers inspired me to push my limits in cross-country racing and another teacher inspired me to take up hillwalking and climbing, and so it went for the next forty years.

I often wonder who influenced all those people that went on to inspire me, but that tangled web of connections would be incredibly difficult to get to the bottom of, and in any case, that would be looking backwards. Looking forwards, the key aspect of finding inspiration is to be open to being inspired and to receive it and embrace it for all it is worth when it happens. If someone looks like influencing you in a positive way, then listen to them and learn from them, and if this book can inspire you, then read it, absorb it and build up the motivation to make changes in your life.

Inspiring others

In May 2013, I cycled with my partner from Land’s End to John O’Groats and we called in to see her work colleagues at their Wednesday morning cake break, which was laid on that day to celebrate our reaching Perthshire. After pigging out on at least ten pieces of cake (I’m not kidding, when you’ve cycled 800 miles in ten days you develop a massive appetite), I got into discussion with one of Fiona’s colleagues. She made a comment that has really stuck with me, "If you can cycle the length of the country, then I should be capable of cycling to work at least a couple of times a week. You’ve